This Weekend...22 Years Ago

Posted by Aaron Aradillas

(Due to some tech­nic­al glitches, I’ve taken down the orig­nal post for tweak­ing. This is the new and improved ver­sion. My apo­lo­gies for any incon­veni­ence.)

Seeing as last week’s entry brought back so many memor­ies, I thought it would be fun to look at a week­end that actu­ally cor­rel­ated to this Labor Day week­end. That means 22 years ago Aug. 29^th-Sept.1^st fell on the same days as this Labor Day weekend. 

Let’s see what we were see­ing 22 years ago.

TW  LW      TITLE             WEEKEND GROSS      THEATERS         TOTAL GROSS (SO FAR) WEEK #

1       2        Stand By Me           $5,037,343                 801                   $11,932,227                            4

2       4        Top Gun                 $5,024,325                1,289                $131,345,236                         16

3       1         The Fly                  $4,198,506                 1,171                $22,279,867                            3 

4       6        The Karate Kid II    $3,776,755                1,542                $98,942,459                            11

5       3        Aliens                     $3,586,256               1,249                $66254,475                               7

6       8        Nothing in Common   $3,492,620             951                   $22,066,579                             5

7       9        Extremities               $2,761,032             696                   $6,645,066                              2

8       10      Ruthless People         $2,729,612             958                    $59,165,825                           10 

9       N       Born American           $2,225,475             1,71                   $2,225,475                             1 

10     7       Armed & Dangerous    $1,813,353             1,123                 $12,229,865                           3

So, bring back any memor­ies? The fact that Extremities jumped up two slots is a bit of a mind-blower. Who knew that the con­tinu­ing adven­tures of Daniel LaRusso would out­gross the con­tinu­ing adven­tures of Ellen Ripley? We’re get­ting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a more crit­ic­al look at what we were watch­ing over the Labor Day weekend.

1. Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me is what we would call “coun­ter­pro­gram­ming.” Released in the middle of August, the movie kept build­ing upon its audi­ence. It was a Stephen King adapt­a­tion that did­n’t rely on the King audi­ence for its suc­cess. Indeed, the film’s trail­er almost omits King’s con­nec­tion to the movie.

The movie is a good piece of middlebrow nos­tal­gia that works best when it does­n’t push its “sig­ni­fic­ance” on you. Basically, take out the Richard Dreyfuss nar­ra­tion and you have an almost per­fect movie. Unfortunately, Rob Reiner (and screen­writers Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans) can­’t res­ist remind­ing us that the moment between the ages 12 and 13 is the most mem­or­able moment you’ll ever have. (This would seem to neg­ate American Graffiti where we were told that the moment after high school and right before col­lege is the most mem­or­able moment you’ll ever have. How many “mem­or­able moments” can one gen­er­a­tion have?) 

I think what audi­ences con­nec­ted with was the remark­able ensemble act­ing by Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, Corey Feldman, and the late River Phoenix. And it is Phoenix who takes the stock char­ac­ter of the mis­un­der­stood “bab” kid and creaes some­thing uni­ver­sal. He con­veys the hun­ger of not want­ing to ful­fill what is expec­ted of you beau­ti­fully. (His tear­ful “con­fes­sion” is a heartbreaker.) 

The best scene in the movie? An ima­gin­at­ive gross-out that King stand-in Gordie Lachance (Wheaton) tells around a camp­fire. It’s a gross-out you can only tell when you’re young and innocent. 

2. Along with Rambo: First Blood Part II, Top Gun is pos­sibly the most rep­res­ent­at­ive example of 80s com­mer­cial movie­mak­ing. It’s a movie of the moment that func­tions as nos­tal­gia almost the moment it leaves the theat­er. As an example of a movie with no shelf life its pretty enter­tain­ing. It’s also the movie where Tom Cruise BECAME the movie. (The Color of Money, which would be released a few weeks later, would be the last time where the movie came before Cruise. It would­n’t be until 1999, with Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia, where the movies would be just as rel­ev­ant as Cruise.) 

Like the earlier-in-the-year Iron Eagle, Top Gun was a Destrroy All Commies extra­vag­anza (but with a bet­ter soundtrack). It used Cruise’s all-American image to power­ful effect. It also showed that Kelly McGillis’ sexu­al­ity was bet­ter suited when she acted oppos­ite an adult like, say, Harrison Ford. And Val Kilmer man­aged to keep his dig­nity by dar­ing to give a low-key (by Top Gun stand­ards) performance. 

3. David Cronenberg’s remake of the 1958 B sci-fi/horror stand­ard turns out to be one of the greatest love stor­ies ever made. A bril­liant re-think of schlock, Cronenberg’s The Fly is an unset­tling med­it­a­tion on the deteri­or­a­tion of the human body dur­ing Era of AIDS. Jeff Goldblum, in the per­form­ance of his life, plays Brundle Fly as a man who real­izes too late that the uncon­di­tion­al love of anoth­er per­son is the truest way to achieve teleportation. 

The Fly is also one of Croneberg’s best gros-outs.

4. I’m pretty sure if you were to ask people in the know what were some of the big money-makers of 1986 they’d prob­ably men­tion Top Gun or the sur­prise hit Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or maybe Crocodile Dundee. I’m also pretty sure those same people would be startled to know that The Karate Kid Part II was the 4^th highest gross­ing movie of the year. This is a text­book example of the stu­dio (and film­makers) strik­ing while the iron’s hot. The kids (includ­ing yours truly) who had made the first install­ment in the sage of Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Machio) a big hit on video (and more import­antly HBO) were prac­tic­ally demand­ing more.

The one mas­ter­stroke of the film­makers was to switch the set­ting from sunny California to the nys­ter­i­ous (at leat to most 7‑year-olds) Okinawa, birth­place of Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi. And while I gently mock the movie, I’m actu­ally still quite fond of it. John G. Avildsen’s sturdy dir­ec­tion (read: simple) does­n’t get in the way of the story or the per­form­ances. And next to The Outsiders, Machio nev­er seemed more assured of his act­ing choices. 

But the movie really belongs to Morita (and Miyagi). While the stu­dio would nev­er think of mak­ing Mr. Miyahi the cen­ter of the movie, it was the way he reacted to the people and situ­ations around him that made the The Karate Kid Part II (and the still-great Part I) spe­cial.

Having said all that, Peter Cetera’s Glory of Love is no match for Joe Esposito’s You’re the Best.

5. What can you say about James Cameron’s Aliens that has­n’t already been said? Like Lucas’ Ewoks-Vietnam par­al­lels, Cameron saw his entry in the Alien fran­chise as a ver­sion of Vietnam, with a group of hot shot Marines going into for­eign ter­rit­ory ill-equipped to do battle with a more determ­ined enemy. That’s all fine and good, but I have an easi­er, sim­pler way of look­ing at Aliens.

If Alien is the spaced-out prog-rock entry…

and Alien3 is the grunge-rock entry…

and Alien: Resurrection is the techno-electronica entry…

then Aliens is without a doubt the Reagan-sanctioned rock ’n’ roll entry. 

6.

Some crit­ics dis­missed this movie as a father-son Terms of Endearment. I can­’t think of a high­er form of praise. (Granted, Gary Marshall is not in the same league as James L. Brooks.) The struc­ture of Nothing in Common is kind of ingeni­ous in the way it sneaks up on you. The first half is a rather know­ing and engross­ing look at TV advert­ise­ment, with star-in-the-making Tom Hanks play­ing that rarest of char­ac­ters in an 80s movie: a likable Yuppie. 

It isn’t until Hanks’ David Basner is forecd to con­front the real­ity of his par­ents’ mar­riage end­ing after 36 years, that we begin to see a streak of cruelty that he jus­ti­fies as self-preservation. As the par­ents, Eva Marie Saint (fra­gile, eas­ily wounded) and Jackie Gleason (simply great in his final per­form­ance), give late-in-their-careers per­form­ances that are like a mas­ter class in how con­trast­ing act­ing styles can com­ple­ment each other. 

An Honorary Mention should also be giv­en to a ter­rif­ic per­form­acne by Barry Corbin as an air­line tycoon who is not all that dis­sim­il­ar from Gleason’s char­ac­ter. The scene where Hanks finally stands up to Corbin is the movie’s high­light. The son finally breaks away from the father. 

7. Extremities wants to be a “ser­i­ous” movie about the Victimization of Women, but because Farrah Fawcett’s act­ing style is bet­ter suited for the intim­acy of TV, it comes off as an exploit­a­tion movie. Based on an appar­ently well-received stage play, the film ver­sion of Extremities comes off like I Spit On Your Grave for the Off-Broadway crowd. Just look at the movie’s trail­er and you’ll get an idea of how schiz­oid the movie is. Director Robert M. Young is a long way from Short Eyes.

8. A cheer­fully mean-spirited com­edy, Ruthless People solid­i­fied Danny DeVito as a one-of-a-kind movie star. Having already giv­en a great com­ic per­form­ance earli­er in the year in Brian DePalma’s under­rated gang­ster com­edy Wise Guys, Ruthless People was a show­case for DeVito’s spe­cialty of play­ing lov­able scoundrels. 

A loose re-telling of the O. Henry story “The Ransom of Red Chief,” Ruthless People is a candy-colored (cine­ma­to­graphy by Jad De Bont), fast-paced screw­ball com­edy that takes advant­age of the ever widen­ing gap between the rich and every­one lese. 

A rare non-spoof out­ing for the ZAZ boys (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker), the movie has a sur­pris­ingly deep roster of mem­or­able sup­port­ing per­form­ances. You have Bette Midler, com­plet­ing her tri­umphant return to movies after the earlier-in-the-year release of the clas­sic American com­edy Down and Out in Beverly Hills, as Devito’s spoiled wife (“I’ve been kid­napped by K‑Mart!”); Bill Pullman, in his movie debut, as the slow-witted boy­friend of Devito’s mis­tress; Anita Morris, fresh from the Brat Pack noir Blue City, as DeVito’s hot-to-trot mis­tress; Art Evans and Clarence Felder as two of the most dead­pan detect­ives ever, William G. Schilling as a police chief who “…like[s] to hear a woman make a lot of sound”; Helen Slater, still try­ing to find redemp­tion after Supergirl, as the slightly annoy­ing inno­cent wife of kid­nap­per Judge Reinhold. And, then you have Reihold (in the follow-up to his great per­form­ance in the lovely romantic music­al Off Beat), as a sweet-natured ste­reo sales­amn (“The Big Room!”) who learns being ruth­less isn’t for him. He’d rather be rich.

Oh, and I love wrong numbers.

9. Renny Harlin’s Born American is an inter­na­tion­al action movie I’d barely heard of. It looks as if Daddy Chuck Norris opted out of the pic­ture and put in a good word for his son. Harlin, an under­rated B movie tech­ni­cian, fol­lowed this up with A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, one of the more visualy arrest­ing of the Freddy sequels. If there are any 80s B action experts out there, please, feel free to leave comments. 

10.

One of the many dis­pos­able John Candy cmed­ies that gave only a glipse of his com­ic geni­us. (Armed and Dangerous was made even more depress­ing because Candy was paired with the equally tal­en­ted Eugene Levy.) This late sum­mer throwaway saw Candy and Levy as two would-be private secur­ity officers on the trail of…I don’t even recall. Basically the story was just an excuse to put Cand & Levy in would-be com­ic situ­ations (like hav­ing them dis­gusie them­selves by dress­ing up in S&M gear) that rarely paid off. (I much pre­ferred Candy’s pre­vi­ous sum­mer offer­ing, Carl Reiner’s sweet-natured Summer Rental.)

Two tid­bits of trivia worht noting:

1. This was the second of America’s Sweetheart Meg Ryan’s par­ti­cip­a­tion in Big Summer Movies. I have to admit she is cute in the movie. 

2. This was a major let­down for dir­ect­or Mark L. Lester after the one-two-three punch of:

Class of 1984

Firestarter

Commando